Possible New Role for the Stapleton Foundation?

Landri Taylor, Stapleton Foundation executive director, announced at the November CAB meeting a study into how the foundation could assist buyers in making down payments on affordable homes. The foundation is contracting with BBC, a Denver-based economics consulting firm, to inventory the existing and forecast supply of median priced-homes in Stapleton, said to be in the $500,000 range. Taylor said that “gives us an idea of how many buyers will be able to access affordability at Stapleton.” He said he looks at “unaffordable simply meaning the cash necessary to close the deal. Buyers typically in the 80 to 100 percent AMI (area median income) can indeed afford the monthly payment but they lack the resources to actually bring the down payment and closing costs to the table.”

Taylor wants to test whether the foundation could act as a lender of last resort, contributing perhaps a five-year no-interest loan to assist a buyer in making some portion of the down payment. Taylor said the 90-day study will also examine other ways the Foundation can assist buyers and models from around the country for preserving affordable units long-term. In Stapleton, affordable for-sale units can transition from a deed-restricted condition to the open market in as little as 15 years.

Taylor said affordable housing has been the “number one conversation” for the past year with CAB and the SDC while the foundation has not been an active participant in the affordable housing issue. He said the foundation board identified affordable housing last spring as its number one priority: “It presented the perfect opportunity as we near completion of development at Stapleton for the foundation to jump in and start to convene a conversation that would actually produce a direction of increasing and preserving affordable housing at Stapleton.”